


Chasing Shadows

by muggle95



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst to make you cry, Angst with a Less-Depressing Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Detective Conan Movie 17: Private Eye in the Distant Sea, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Satou Miwako, Shinichi's convoluted schemes, Yes both of them, characters being too casual about unnamed dead bodies, faked major character death, implied gore: burns, in addition to the harsher things already tagged, in this case it's not gambit pileup but there's definitely a gambit, mostly - Freeform, murders left unsolved, one of these days I will learn how to tag without rambling, please note that is not a happy ending, real major character death, this is actually not as angsty as I was originally going for?, y'know I haven't seen a tag for that before but it should absolutely be a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 22:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19327357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muggle95/pseuds/muggle95
Summary: In some other universe, a series of coincidences prevent Mouri Ran from drowning, after being thrown overboard. She makes it through with a mild case of hypothermia.In this universe, she wasn't so lucky.Sato's just trying to make sense of the aftermathPicks up at the climax of Movie 17: Private Eye in the Distant SeaRated T+ for major character death, canon typical violence, and a slightly heavier focus on death/grief than in canon





	1. Ran

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to [aceoftwos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceoftwos) for the beta, and to [copperscales](https://copperscales.tumblr.com/) for suggesting the title.
> 
> As usual, this is fanfiction; no matter how much I love the characters, I don't own them
> 
> Mind the tags

Ran was overboard, and time was running out. They had discovered her absence too late, so the rescue team was racing the clock to find her in a huge area before hypothermia claimed her life, if she was still at the surface of the sea and breathing at all. No, they had to believe she was still alive. Giving up wouldn’t do them any good.

She was still wearing Mitsuhiko’s radio watch... But the radio signals failed to materialize at five pm, which meant Mitsuhiko’s radio watch was too far under the ocean for its signals to be picked up. Sonoko was wailing. The kids were crying. Shinichi felt tears running down his face, but for once he didn’t care. He could barely see the room around him, barely heard the continuing frantic conversations, as all his fear and desperation and anger boiled inside him into a nearly primal scream. “RAN!” But of course, she didn’t hear him, didn’t react. It wasn’t like she was on the destroyer to be able to respond.

Shinichi didn’t notice the measuring look Sato gave him as he tried not to sob. _Ran. We’ve got to find you. I’ll find you. I promise. Didn’t I say I would always find you?_

Still, there was nothing. The helicopter continued searching for her until it had to return to refuel an hour later. Kogoro was awake by then, and had alternated between desperately screaming for his daughter and demanding that everyone do more and better than they were already doing to find her. Shinichi was prepared to beg for the helicopter to go out again, was prepared to take it himself if they refused, and the set of Kogoro’s jaw told the younger detective that the older was thinking the same way.

They didn’t have to beg. The officers of Division One shared a look over the heads of the sobbing Detective Boys, and ordered the helicopter out again for one more sweeping pass over the dark waves.

Another half hour of torturous waiting, and then the rescue team noticed the sparkles of something reflective in the waves. They investigated, and found Ran’s body surrounded by dozens of her father’s metallic business cards. She was already cold.

The world seemed to close in around Shinichi. He called Ran’s name again and again. He yelled and sobbed and pounded the floor and fought against Megure when the man picked him up to prevent him from hurting himself. _Ran, no. You can’t be dead. Please. No._

_Ran_

The paramedics in the helicopter estimated that her heart had stopped around 5:30, more than an hour before she was found. No one commented on how that estimate mirrored the other death from that morning; it seemed insensitive to say.

When they got back to shore, the rest of the passengers were ushered off of the ship. Although they had been isolated from the tragedy, the entire crowd was full of subdued whispering, speculating about the helicopter’s many trips, the police activity onboard that was separate from the military training they’d been invited to watch, the ship’s delayed return, and the sobbing children that a few had overheard.

Once the boat was free of uninvolved civilians, a few members of the Osaka police force escorted Yuki’s father onto the ship; they’d found him tied up and freed him to await his son. Yuki and his father were tearfully reunited, but rather than tears of joy, Yuki cried tears of remorse for the kind oneesan who had protected him and been drowned by the spy. They departed quickly, neither one wanting to be reminded of the stresses of the day.

Finally, the boat was empty except for the crew, the police, the Detective Boys, Kogoro, and Sonoko. And Ran’s cold body, hidden in the back of the helicopter.

Three of the Detective Boys had cried themselves to exhaustion, and had taken restless naps, watched over by Sato and Takagi. Kogoro had disappeared to the kitchens, and was busy drinking himself into a stupor. Shinichi was still weakly struggling in Megure’s arms, futilely begging Ran to come back.

“Conan-kun, please. Hitting me won’t change anything,” the Inspector grunted after Shinichi’s shoe (powered off, fortunately) found the same spot under his ribcage for the fifth time.

“Let me see her. I’ve got to see her. Ran, please!” Shinichi begged, not caring that he could be giving himself away with the lack of honorifics. Ran couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.

 

“She’s dead, Conan-kun. I’m sorry,” Megure said gently, and held the child firmly as he continued to flail. The inspector forced his own grief down. He could grieve tonight, after work, and he would. Mouri Ran was beloved by the entire police force for her eternally cheerful nature, sobered by the deaths of others but not overcome by them. Ran would be missed by everyone. But for now, Megure was more concerned with preventing the brilliant boy in his arms from doing something impulsive, hurting himself, or perhaps even jumping overboard. There was something feral in Conan’s eyes that worried Megure, so he continued to hold the boy in a bear hug, to protect the child from himself.

“Please. Ran. Let me see her. Ran!” The child continued to beg, and every wavering syllable broke Megure’s heart a little further. Conan really had been attached to his guardian, and she hadn’t deserved to die at this age. She hadn’t even graduated high school yet, she’d had her whole life ahead of her, and now… Days like this made Megure wonder why he had ever joined the police force.

Sato let Takagi herd the three sniffling children out onto the deck ahead of her, and looked up at the fourth child, still held tightly in her boss’s arms, arguing and fighting to be allowed to see Ran again. She approached the pair, feeling uncharacteristically timid. “Um, Megure-keibu? If he wants to see…” _The body._ “Ran-san for a moment, I’m willing to take him.”

“Are you sure, Sato-kun?” Megure winced as Conan’s elbow caught him under the chin (“Let me go, I’ve got to see her, please!”), apparently not for the first time – Sato could see the shadow of a bruise forming. He met her eyes, and she could see the concern written all over her boss’s face. _Are you sure that won’t make it worse?_ his face seemed to be asking.

Sato thought back to when her father had died in the line of duty, how unfair it had seemed when adults had tried to keep her away from him, to try to spare her the heartache. It hadn’t helped at all. “I think Conan-kun could use the closure,” she said carefully, looking down at the desperate child.

Conan’s face was blotchy from sobbing, and covered with tear tracks, some smudged, some dry, some fresh. He barely seemed aware of his surroundings, and he hadn’t called Ran “neechan” even once since they had found out she was missing, which, in contrast with how Conan was always so careful to correct himself to the proper forms of address, seemed to emphasize how upset he was.

Conan clearly wasn’t following their conversation, but he seemed to sense her attention, and he stilled and blinked miserably up at her, meeting her gaze for a few seconds before his jaw trembled with more tears. He clenched his teeth and looked away.

“Conan-kun, if you promise to quit fighting, I’ll take you to see Ran-san. Deal?” Sato asked, trying to keep her own stress and grief out of her voice. The child met her eyes again, and his own were brimming with tears. He nodded solemnly. “You promise?” she prompted.

“…Promise,” he mumbled, voice cracking on the single word.

Sato looked back up at her boss. “Will you set Conan-kun down so we can go for a walk, please?” Megure reluctantly set the boy down, his face saying everything. Don’t let Conan-kun do anything stupid. Take care of him.

Sato held out her hand, and Conan reluctantly reached up and placed his clenched fist into it. Sato thought she saw a hint of red near his palm, where his nails must be digging in, but she decided not to comment. Conan was already cooperating better than he had been, she wasn’t going to upset him immediately by pointing out all the ways in which he was hurting himself. She wrapped her hand gently around his fist and started walking slowly toward the helicopter pad. The child followed docilely beside her, sniffling quietly.

They were more than halfway to the helicopter, where Ran’s body was still covered by a sheet, before either one spoke. “Ran-san meant a lot to you, huh, Conan-kun?” Sato prompted gently, hoping to draw the child out a little bit.

“The whole world,” he mumbled flatly, and didn’t elaborate. The pair lapsed back into silence. Sato considered his answer with more than a little curiosity. Most children were attached to their guardians, but very few would use that phrase to describe them. Most kids thought the world was infinite, wouldn’t consider a single person, no matter how important, to be the entirety of the world. But then, it wasn’t really news that Conan-kun wasn’t like other kids. He always seemed more mature. He took death more seriously than his peers, even if he ignored danger to himself just as recklessly.

They walked up to the helicopter in renewed silence, and Sato felt tears forming in her own eyes when she saw the body-sized lump on the floor of the vehicle and remembered the lively girl it had once been.

Three meters from the helicopter, Conan stopped, tugging Sato back, and she let herself be caught, her hand still wrapped around his. “Um, Sato-keiji… Can I... have a minute? On my own.”

She considered briefly. They were in the middle of the deck, not near the edge. She could see clearly to the open panel of the helicopter and through to the other side. Conan-kun was cooperative and sullen, not flailing or trying to run away. There was no apparent danger in close range, and she trusted that if he bolted, she could catch up before he reached anything dangerous.

She let go of his hand. “Of course, Conan-kun.”

The child removed his glasses, folded them, and slipped them into a pocket before he walked slowly, almost reluctantly, toward the helicopter. Sato watched, tense and alert, as he carefully hoisted himself into the vehicle and knelt by the bundle. He pulled back the blanket covering her face and put his hand on her cheek.

“Ran…” The child’s wavering voice barely carried to where Sato was standing. “I’m sorry. I said I would always find you, but I was too late. I’m sorry. Ran…” He let out a small, hiccupping sob. “Oh, Ran. I never told you… I’ve always been here. Always. I wanted to come back, but I never really left. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” Conan was already kneeling, but he pulled back his hand, settled on all fours, tucked his head and sobbed.

Sato approached gently after a few minutes, when Conan’s sobs seemed to be quieting. She swallowed a thick lump out of her throat. “Okay, Conan-kun. We should head back now,” she entreated, holding out a hand to help him down from the helicopter bay. He glanced up at her with tear-filled, glassy eyes that somehow looked so different without his glasses framing them, and nodded silently. He shuffled forward and accepted her help out of the helicopter. When his feet were firmly on the deck of the ship, he pulled out his glasses and put them firmly on his face again. He held up his hand, open this time, and slipped it into Sato’s own.

She’d never quite been the mothering sort, and she couldn’t think of anything to say that would help, so they started walking back toward the others in utter silence. Sato let herself ponder the strange things the child had said. _I never told you, but I never left. I wanted to come back._ That made it sound like Ran knew him as someone else, someone she had missed. But if that were the case, why wouldn’t she have recognized him as Conan? Had Ran been close to any other kids Conan-kun’s age before he had moved into the Mouri Detective Agency with them? She didn’t know, Sato realized. She’d only met the Mouri family after Conan had been living with them a while and his friends were already joining them constantly for events.

“Thanks,” Conan whispered, his barely audible voice snapping Sato out of her thoughts, and she realized they were almost back to the group. “I… I needed to see her. To believe she was dead. It wasn’t real until I saw her.” The child’s voice sounded dead, monotone. She felt for him. His parents didn’t seem all that interested in his life, and now a guardian who did care, who had shown unbounded, enthusiastic interest in his life, was dead.

“I know, Conan-kun,” she offered. “I lost my dad when I was only a little older than you are.”

He snorted bitterly in response, looking down and away, and didn’t say anything. Sato frowned. What had she said to cause the child to close off again? Maybe he had a poor relationship with his own father? As far as she knew, both of his parents were alive. Maybe he had lost his father even younger than she had? Sato sighed, trying to hide her own frustration and resignation and grief. Ran would know the answer to that, but Sato could no longer ask her.

When they reached the group, Conan shuffled forward to stand with Suzuki Sonoko, of all people, and Megure-keibu sidled up beside Sato. “Well?” he prompted.

She nodded forward at Conan-kun, who had slipped his hand into Suzuki’s and appeared to be saying something quietly. “He needed to see her. I… had expected that. And I think he said his goodbyes. He seemed to have apologized for something, and then he cried and now it almost looks like he’s accepted it. Her death, I mean. I don’t know if he has, if he really understands at that age, but he’s definitely calmer now.”

“Apologizing for something?” asked Takagi, from her other side. “What would he apologize for? He didn’t do anything to cause her to get tossed overboard.”

“No, it didn’t sound like that,” Sato agreed, pondering. “It was… probably something small,” she fibbed, despite having gotten the opposite impression. It seemed too personal for her or anyone else to pry into, especially right now. “I know _I’m_ second-guessing the most recent interactions I had with Ran-san too, and we only had a working relationship.” She shrugged off the concerned glances from her coworkers. “Leave him alone,” Sato heard herself say. “Ran-san seemed to care for him more than his own mother did. It’s possible he thought of her as his mother, not just his neechan. He needs some space to grieve.”

The others nodded their understanding right before Suzuki shrieked “and where is that useless mystery geek anyway? His wife drowned!” Sato glanced up at them and saw that the teen was now hugging Conan like a teddy bear. The child rubbed his ear, wincing at the volume or the shrillness of her voice, but he looked strangely comfortable as he mumbled something else to her. If Conan had been a few years older, Sato might have classified his expression as nostalgic. “I _know_ they weren’t married yet, but everyone knows they were going to get married eventually,” Suzuki responded, still shouting, and sounding almost as lively as she usually had before… tonight. Shrill though her voice was, Sato preferred to see Suzuki angry rather than the despondent, sobbing heap she had been for the first hour.

Megure groaned. “Someone’s going to have to hunt Kudou-kun down so they can tell him about Ran-kun”

“Huh? Is it that hard to get a hold of him?” Takagi asked. “Doesn’t he call Conan-kun all the time?”

“He picks up Conan-kun’s calls sometimes when Conan-kun needs his help on a case,” Megure allowed. “And he calls me once in a while with a tip. But he almost never picks up, even for Ran-kun. I don’t even know his number, he keeps it private.”

“Maybe if we told his parents what happened, they would give us his number?” Sato suggested.

“Maybe,” the inspector agreed. “But for that, you’d have to get one of them on the phone first, and that’s almost as difficult.”

“Maybe we could just get his number from Conan-kun?” Takagi suggested, eyeing the box of phones a crew member was bringing around.

“It’s not really our place, though,” Sato observed. “He’s not family, and they weren’t even dating to my understanding. Shouldn’t Mouri-san have the right to tell Kudou-kun what’s happened when he’s ready for people to know?”

Megure considered that briefly. “We have no authority to tell him officially, but off the clock I’m friends with the Kudou family, and with my own judgment I would choose to tell him sooner rather than later.”

Takagi nodded determinedly and stepped up to where Suzuki was just putting her phone back into her purse. Likewise, Conan, standing on the deck next to her, had both hands in his pockets, and had probably recently put his phone away. “Excuse me, Suzuki-chan. Do you have Kudou-kun’s number?”

Conan interrupted Suzuki’s affirmative answer with a blunt, “I’ve already texted him.”

Megure frowned. “You texted him? Conan-kun, usually for hard truths like that people prefer to hear the news in person. That’s why one of us adults wanted to call him,” he scolded gently.

Conan scowled. “I don’t care. He needed to know so I told him.” He stormed off toward the exit ramp, where Detective Mouri was already staggering down. On the pier beyond, it appeared that Conan’s friends were already piling into Agasa’s beetle.

Suzuki sighed, and pulled her phone back out. “I’ll call him myself, if you want to wait,” she offered, sounding tired and defeated, but no longer weepy. All three officers nodded gratefully, and she navigated her phone quickly before dialing a number and put her phone up to her ear. After two muffled rings, Sato thought she heard Kudou’s voice, too muffled to make out the words, but Suzuki just frowned. When Kudou’s voice quit talking, she scolded. “Idiot mystery otaku. Call me back, it’s important.” She snapped her phone shut impatiently. “Voicemail,” she grumbled. Moments later her phone chimed. She read the text aloud to the group. “Shinichi-kun says, ‘Conan-kun told me about Ran.’ Is that _all_? His wife is dead and all he says to me, their best friend, is ‘someone told me’?” Suzuki’s voice had risen an octave in fury in the middle of that sentence.

Megure started consoling her, “now, now, Sonoko-kun, everyone reacts to grief differently, you can’t be too hard on him…” and Sato turned back to watch Conan, who was now on shore. He had enough of a support system; she shouldn’t worry as much as she was about him, but she couldn’t help herself. It was awful to see a child – any age, but especially that young – lose a beloved guardian. Sighing, she shook herself away from those thoughts and back into the present. She was on duty, she could fret later.


	2. Conan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sato tries to check on Conan after school, and has an unexpected encounter with a familiar face

Sato stood just outside the gate to the elementary school and checked her watch again. The children would be released from their classrooms in a minute or two. She was there to see Conan since she hadn’t checked in with him for a couple of days, and Mouri Kogoro wasn’t necessarily the best at observing children especially when he was drowning his own sorrow in cheap sake. She just wanted to make sure the child was doing okay, especially because she wasn’t sure anyone else would.

She became aware of someone else beside her, waiting at the gate. She looked up at her new companion. “Kudou-kun?”

He met her gaze, a strange expression on his face that wasn’t quite grief, but it wasn’t anything familiar either. “Hi, Sato-keiji.”

“Kudou-kun, what are you doing here?” Sato asked, startled. From what she had heard, Kudou Shinichi avoided everyone these days. “Did anyone tell you” _about the funeral arrangements_ , she was going to say.

“Even if I hadn’t been told,” he interrupted, “her obituary was in the papers this morning.” His voice softened when he added, “I was hoping to catch Conan-kun. Got some family stuff to talk about.”

“Of course,” Sato agreed, privately wondering why Kudou wouldn’t just call his cousin or visit his house.

Dozens of children swarmed past them, running and laughing eagerly together. The crowd parted, and Sato saw a much less energetic group of five children making their way toward the gate. The blond girl, Haibara Ai (and who named their kid ‘Sorrow’ anyway?), seemed to notice them. Sato watched as the girl elbowed Conan. He looked up at them and scowled. By some silent agreement, Conan-kun peeled off from the rest of the group while Haibara started talking and then led the other three a different direction.

Conan-kun walked up to the pair. “Good afternoon, Sato-keiji,” he greeted her politely. Conan seemed to be pointedly _not_ looking at Kudou, beside her. “Did you want me for something?”

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” she reassured him. “But don’t you want to talk to your cousin?” she prompted.

Conan-kun barely glanced at Kudou-kun before meeting her gaze again. “I’m… fine,” he forced out, then continued more confidently. ”And I have nothing to say to _Kaitou Kid_.” ~~~~

She did a double take. Kudou looked like he always did, so if it was actually Kid, she couldn’t see what was wrong with his disguise. “Kaitou Kid?” she echoed. “Conan-kun…”

Before she could scold him for playing around or ask what Kid’s tell was, Kudou interrupted. “C’mon, kiddo, what makes you think _I’m_ Kaitou Kid,” the teen asked, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

Conan-kun finally met Kudou’s eyes, leveling a glare at the high schooler. He knelt briefly and circled his finger over the side of his right shoe in a signal Sato didn’t recognize. Then he straightened up and started dribbling a nearby rock, soccer-style, almost too casually for the glare he was still levelling at the teen. “Don’t lie to me,” he commanded, voice hard and cold. Sato blinked at the child’s sudden shift from sullen to deadly serious.

“Okay, okay. Take it easy. You’re right. I’m Kid,” Ku– er, Kid responded, his voice suddenly smoother, a subtle tension in his frame as he held his hands up by his shoulders in a clear surrender. Conan frowned at Kid only a moment longer before his shoulders relaxed. He let the rock drop to the ground and kicked it away with his left foot. As he did, Kid also relaxed. “Geez. Do you know anyone else who can disguise themself as Kudou-kun this convincingly?”

“Yes.” Conan growled, doing something with his right shoe again.

Kid looked startled. “ _Really_?”

Sato’s head was spinning. This was Kaitou Kid and although Conan-kun wasn’t happy to see the famous thief, he trusted Kid more than someone else who could impersonate Kudou-kun so flawlessly. He also recognized that Kid was an imposter before the thief had said a word.

“Two, actually,” Conan-kun elaborated, “but one knows better and the other… “ He looked like he was about to say more, but then he shook his head forcefully, nearly concealing a full-body shudder, and clearly refusing to elaborate on that train of thought. “Anyway. What do you want?” he demanded, glaring at Kid again, though less venomously than before.

“Relax, Tantei-kun,” Kid purred. “I just came to offer my condolences. I had to show up as someone you’d recognize.” Kid flicked his wrist and a sprig of small purple flowers appeared in his hand. _Shion, rememberance_ , whispered half-forgotten etiquette lessons from Sato’s childhood. Conan clearly recognized the flower’s significance as well, because his glare relaxed into a slight frown as Kid tucked it into one of the buttonholes of the child’s blazer. “She was a beautiful person and a worthwhile adversary,” Kid admitted softly as he did so.

Conan sighed, sounding more tired than mad. “If that’s all…”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something else,” Kid murmured quietly. “But perhaps… not here.” That was intriguing, but Sato was relieved to notice her own bafflement and distrust reflected in Conan’s posture. It wasn’t likely a conversation between accomplices. And yet, why couldn’t he talk about it here? Was it because of her presence? Any conversations that couldn’t happen in public, and especially ones involving known criminals raised all sorts of red flags in her mind.

Conan didn’t respond, just met Kid’s gaze with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

After an uncomfortably long silence, during which Kid gestured at his own (borrowed) face at least twice, less subtly than he probably thought, and Conan’s face had slowly transformed from irritated and confused to understanding and exasperated and maybe also grateful, Conan finally spoke.

“Fine,” Conan snapped. “Meet me at the Professor’s house in an hour. I’ll let them know you’re coming.” He pulled out his phone and started typing out a message, turning his back on the thief in what was clearly a dismissal.

Sato ran the conversation briefly through her head again. Kid was offering something to Conan but refused to say in front of her. Conan seemed to have guessed what Kid was offering, which meant it was probably obvious. Was he offering to impersonate someone? But why? Even if so, why would he come to Conan with the offer? Usually for things that major, she would expect Kid to approach an adult. Unless Conan was the only person who knew something. She prodded that thought a little more carefully. Conan had known at a glance that Kid was not actually Kudou… “Conan-kun, are you covering up Kudou-kun’s death or something?” she asked, barely able to believe that conclusion.

She hoped either Conan-kun or Kid would laugh in her face since that guess was based on astoundingly little evidence. Instead, Kid raised an eyebrow at the child, clearly deferring to his answer. Was that a yes?

Conan wasn’t meeting her eyes, a slightly distant, calculating expression on his face. But barely a moment later than would have been polite, he turned round, innocent eyes upon her and answered, “if Shinichi-niisan was dead, he wouldn’t be able to help me with any cases. And Heiji-niisan and his other friends would know if he was dead.”

“Er, right,” she agreed, not entirely satisfied, and trying to figure out how to ask a question that would get a more direct answer. Her mind was still whirling trying to puzzle out what had been left unsaid in that conversation.

“And _I_ would be furious at whoever… or whatever had killed him,” Conan appended, with that same tone of finality he had initially greeted Kid with. “So Sato-keiji, if you have no more questions…” His phone beeped and he trailed off to answer another text.

 _I have so many questions_ , she didn’t actually say, but while she was fumbling for the right follow-up question to ask, Conan seemed to take her hesitation as a dismissal.

“Right. I’ll see you around, Sato-keiji,” he muttered before rushing off.

She frowned and turned to Kid to see if he would answer any questions, but the thief was already gone.

Halfway to the train station she realized that neither of them had actually denied her suspicion that Kudou was dead.

 

The next day, while filling out tedious paperwork for a recent arrest, Sato mused to Takagi. “Have you ever wondered about Conan-kun?”

“You mean besides his hoards of mysterious abilities?” Takagi asked. “Including both his talent for asking impossibly helpful ‘innocent questions’ and his ability to defuse a bomb before I relayed the instructions to him? Or did you mean his frequent disappearances while Mouri-san is pulling the sleeping act, or when his cousin is around and solving cases, even though as an aspiring detective, Conan is likely particularly interested in their reveals?”

“Yeah, stuff like that,” Sato agreed quietly, glad she had been reminded to factor in the entire Tokyo Tower Bomber fiasco into her mental case file about Edogawa Conan. “Ran-chan’s death made me realize how little we know about his past.”

“Did I ever tell you,” Takagi asked, stumbling over his words slightly more than usual, “when we were stuck in that elevator, I asked him ‘who _are_ you?’ you know, to ask why he was so confident defusing the bomb, and stopping the final message in the middle, and instead of answering me, he just promised he would ‘tell me in the afterlife.’”

 “No, you didn’t!” Sato answered, louder than she intended, garnering some sharp looks from the other officers around the bullpen. She tried to force her voice back to a normal level but instead it came out in a harsh whisper. “Has he said anything since?”

Takagi shook his head. “Nothing. What makes you ask?”

Sato debated mentioning her encounter with Kaitou Kid in her off hours, then decided she didn’t really want to share a story in which she made no attempt to arrest a known international criminal. Instead, she shrugged. “I don’t know, something’s just bothering me about him recently.”

Takagi nodded. “Yeah, I understand that.” Since neither of them had much more to say, the conversation petered out, and both returned to their paperwork. Sato frowned at hers, barely able to focus. Conan obviously could not be Kaitou Kid, who frequently impersonated adults, but he was familiar enough with Kid to have half a conversation where many things were left unsaid, and had seemed to admit to Ran that he was hiding something about his own identity. The question was: what? And was it even something she could investigate? What exactly was Conan hiding?


	3. Shinichi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a funeral happens  
> then another tragedy

That weekend, near the end of Mouri Ran’s funeral, nothing had happened to assuage Sato’s nerves. The entire Kudou family was all there, talking quietly together. She had fixed Kudou Shinichi with a dangerous glare in case he was Kid again, but he had met it with a baffled glance of his own that looked so innocent (and full of grief) that she was starting to question her certainty that he was Kid. It really didn’t make sense for Shinichi to allow anyone to attend Ran’s funeral on his behalf if he wasn’t dead (and Conan had basically said he wasn’t even though he hadn’t properly answered her question) since they had been childhood friends. Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi were sniffling quietly together through the ceremony, and it took Sato another minute to find Conan standing near Mouri Kogoro, shifting uncomfortably as though he wasn’t sure whether he deserved to be with Ran’s family for this.

Hattori Heiji had showed up late, nearly as the ceremony ended, scanned the crowds briefly before walking straight toward the Kudou family, then abruptly changing directions and making a beeline for Conan instead, dragging him away from Mouri Kogoro to say something intensely. (Perhaps Shinichi _was_ dead and Hattori knew it? Conan had said that Hattori would know…) Sato wasn’t close enough to hear, but Hattori’s body language said a lot. Whatever Conan said in return was enough to make Hattori relax, and then the pair approached the Kudou family together, and the five appeared to share a friendly, if somber, greeting.

 

“Why do you look so suspicious?” Takagi asked her quietly, as the first of the guests began to disperse.

Sato shook her head, unwilling to share her speculation until she was more certain that Kid was among the guests. It was in poor taste to accuse any funeral attendees of being imposters. Still, she watched curiously as Hattori and Kudou Shinichi followed Conan, who was weaving purposefully through the crowd, apparently to talk seriously but briefly to the tenant in the Kudou manor. Subaru Okiya, if she remembered correctly. Subaru was lacking his usual kindly smile, but this was a funeral and nothing seemed suspicious about him. “I’ve just got a bad feeling, like something bad is going to happen,” she fibbed. “It’s probably nothing,” she concluded, trying to convince herself more than her partner, as she watched Hattori and Conan walk away with the three Kudous, followed only a few meters behind by their tenant.

 

Somehow, it felt inevitable, when Sato found herself called to respond to reports of an explosion in the same subdivision the Kudous lived in, only three days later. Since a second call identified the event as a car fire and the chance of terrorism was low, Megure declared that he, Sato, and Takagi should go – they should exhibit proper caution but they didn’t have to wait on the bomb squad. She drove herself and Takagi to the scene, fast even for her usual, ignoring Takagi’s protests.

When they arrived at the scene, a block away from the Kudou house, they found firefighters just starting to extinguish a burning sports car with the silhouette of a slender body still in the drivers’ seat. Subaru was standing nearby, wearing indoor slippers and staring disbelievingly at the flames. He had Conan (who was wearing his usual sneakers, though they were untied) in his arms, holding the boy firmly, but Conan was making no effort to go anywhere, instead hiding his face in Subaru’s neck and trembling. Sato parked at a safe distance and immediately approached Subaru to ask him what he knew.

Subaru answered in stuttering, uncertain words, pausing often to collect his thoughts. The delay gave Takagi time to untangle himself from his seatbelt (how _could_ one man be so clumsy? At least it was endearing) and stagger up on wobbly legs. Takagi glared half-heartedly at Sato for her reckless driving, but he stepped up quietly and caught most of Subaru’s explanation.

“Kudou-san and Kudou-san were spending the day out together today. I believe I heard Shinichi-kun asking his mother for permission to drive the car while they were out. I didn’t think he was old enough to have a license, but it’s really not my place to question my landlord’s kid, so I didn’t. Plus, I might have been wrong about his age” he offered a self-deprecating shrug before continuing. “While he was also out, I had the house to myself again, but then Conan-kun came by to visit. I think he’s been staying next door. While I was trying to offer Conan-kun tea or snacks, we heard the explosion and came running out to see what was going on. And I think… I think that’s…”

Subaru didn’t seem able to get the words out, but it wasn’t necessary. Context told her enough. “You think that’s Shinichi-kun in that car?” Sato asked with no small amount of dread.

Subaru nodded somberly, still looking shell-shocked, and Conan made a sound that sounded closer to a wordless cry than an attempt at elaborating, but Sato couldn’t quite be sure since the sound was muffled into Subaru’s neck. Subaru rubbed slow circles on the child’s back in a futile attempt to soothe him.

“So you didn’t witness the car burst into flames, but you’ve been here since shortly thereafter?” Sato asked on reflex.

Fortunately, unlike some witnesses, Subaru didn’t immediately get defensive and ask if she considered him a suspect. He murmured a quiet confirmation and continued staring contemplatively at the car.

The car was no longer in flames, so Sato also turned her attention to it, waiting only for the fire crew to clear it for police inspection. One of the firefighters briefly checked the body for a pulse but then stepped back and none of the crew stepped up to offer medical attention. Dead body then. Her heart sank. She really hoped Subaru was wrong about the body belonging to Kudou Shinichi.

Megure’s squad car pulled to a stop behind Sato’s Mazda right as the firefighters waved Sato and Takagi forward. Megure met them at the burnt shell of a car in time to hear the firefighters tentatively identify the cause of the fire as being related to the bullet hole in the hood. It was hard to tell, with soot and fire-extinguisher-residue covering the engine, but it appeared the bullet had nicked the gas line. It appeared to be a large-bore bullet hole, probably a rifle? Once they’d documented everything else about the crime scene, there would be time to examine the engine more closely, or perhaps the pavement underneath, to find the bullet and confirm that theory.

Having filled in Megure on what Subaru had reported, Takagi took on the task of identifying the license plate number from the charred plate, but given that the flames had been concentrated towards the front of the car, it shouldn’t have been a particularly hard task. That left Sato and Megure hesitating over the body in the drivers’ seat. The body that had tentatively been identified as Kudo Shinichi. Sato sighed and stepped forward. Megure had always spoken fondly of Shinichi, but she had only interacted with him a handful of times. From this distance, it was clear why the firefighters hadn’t attempted resuscitation. The body was charred beyond recognition, including the face. Slim body and short hair, but she couldn’t tell much else. It seemed the headrest had caught fire and burned furiously, even more so than the rest of the seat. Sato allowed forensics to take pictures before gently leaning the body forward to examine it. There were no suspicious marks on the body itself that stuck out to her. Reluctantly, she patted down the corpse’s pockets and retrieved a charred red phone from the front left pocket with a gloved hand, and a beaten fake-leather wallet from the back right pocket. Since the wallet had been sat upon during the blaze, it was comparatively unharmed, though it looked melted along one edge.

She bagged the phone, and returned to Megure, holding the wallet. Takagi had finished reporting the plate to base so someone could run it and confirm whether it was registered to the Kudou family and was waiting with Megure for her to be clear of the driver’s side door. The rest of the regular crew was taping off the area, to the best of their ability (it _was_ a residential street). “These are our best clues at identification, until we run dental,” she informed the others. “I doubt anyone will identify the body based on face alone,” she concluded with a not-quite-repressed shudder.

Sato saw Takagi match her shudder, but Megure’s eyes remained distant for another moment, before he looked resignedly at the wallet in her gloved hands. “Let’s see it then,” he instructed, and only long-familiarity with her boss’s confident manner gave Sato any hint that he was affected. He hid it pretty well. That was an important skill to have at a crime scene.

She nodded and obediently flipped the wallet open, then tugged a stack of three cards out from their place The plastic laminate on the top card was peeling due to the heat, but the card itself was still recognizable enough as a student ID card. Specifically, Kudo Shinichi’s student ID from Teitan High. A quick check identified the other two cards as Shinichi’s insurance card and a credit card belonging to Kudo Yuusaku.

Megure sighed heavily. “I suppose I should call Kudou-san,” he decided, sounding resigned and more tired than Sato had ever seen him. He stepped away to make the call, but not so far that Sato couldn’t hear him. He seemed to call three times, frowning at his phone each time upon dialing again, before finally leaving a terse voicemail. “Kudou-san, call me back. There’s a case I need your input on.” Then he returned to their cluster of police officers. “Neither Kudou is picking up their phones. In the meantime, we continue investigating the scene. What else do we see?”

It was asked rhetorically, as an instruction to return to investigating, but Sato already had an answer. “I want someone to run tests on those seats. Test the headrest for accelerants, at the very least,” she pointed out, and Takagi made his surprised-realization sound when he also apparently also noticed how much more charred it was than everything else. Megure nodded and assigned one of the technicians to take samples. Another crew was dispatched to carefully check the two buildings to the south from which a sniper might have had a clear shot, although no one really expected to find anyone, an hour or more after shots had been fired. They were hoping to at least find evidence of the sniper’s presence.

 

When it became clear that no more details were forthcoming until the results of chemical tests were known, forensics snapped a final round of pictures, gently prepared the body to be taken to the morgue, and then settled the burnt shell of a car onto a tow truck to be taken to a police-controlled junk yard. If they needed evidence from it within the next month or so, it would be available, and after that, it would be released to a regular junkyard. After it was released, it would be invalid as evidence and potentially tampered with, but the analysis team would be certain they were done with it before signing off on moving it out.

Regardless, with the car trundling forlornly away, and the elder Kudous still not responding, there was nothing left to do but paperwork. She returned to Subaru, who was still standing on the sidewalk, alternating concerned glances at the shell of what was once a car, the soot stains on the pavement where it had been, and at the boy beside him. Conan was now standing on the sidewalk, clinging to Subaru’s pant leg, just below the knee, and staring after the car with a forlorn expression on his face. She handed Subaru a pair of witness forms, to fill out, and asked if he and Conan would rather come to the station to fill them out so they didn’t have to remember to bring them in later.

Subaru glanced down at Conan, who was still glassy-eyed and distant. “I think not,” he said, offering an apologetic grimace.

Sato nodded, understanding. Conan had spent so much time with Ran in the police station after Detective Mouri solved murders, and probably even more time doing the same with Shinichi if he had really learned all his detective skills from the teen, that taking him to a police station after yet another death might only serve to upset Conan further. She reminded them of the deadline for the witness forms, and promised that she or one of the other officers would be back that evening to collect them. She knew Megure was hoping to tell Yuusaku about Shinichi’s presumed death himself, but she wanted to check on Conan. If he was spending more time with Agasa since Ran’s death, that was probably a good thing, or at least better than living alone with a grieving Mouri Kogoro, who was flighty at the best of times.

As Sato started her car and pulled away from the scene, she realized uncomfortably that it was the first crime scene at which she’d encountered Conan and which had not led to a day-of arrest of a confessing murderer. She chased the thought out of her head. It was supernatural and unrealistic to expect that a seven-year-old boy’s presence would magically reveal all murderers. It was just _weird_ , the way they hadn’t had to chase him away from the body even once. She chalked it up to his grief. Plus, a sniper’s shot didn’t leave much local evidence and given who the victim was, maybe she shouldn’t be surprised.

 

* * *

 

Kaito didn’t have to fake his discomfort as he answered Sato’s questions with the carefully constructed story Shinichi had dreamed up. He rubbed soothing circles on Conan’s back as the too-small teen hid his face from the horrendously convincing illusion of himself, as he should look, dying a painful death by fire. (Kaito didn’t want to know where Shinichi had procured an actual dead body from. How did he keep talking Kaito into doing things for him? That time on the train he nearly died! Kaito knew Shinichi’s secret identity, and (…probably?) not the other way around; shouldn’t that tip the power imbalance the other way?)

He recited the story, and he didn’t have to fake the numb horror in his voice. Shinichi’s doppelganger could be his own, and several of his recurring nightmares had involved fire.

The worst part was, he wasn’t the one who really needed to be a convincing actor today. Both of Shinichi’s parents would have to convince the police they were horrified to hear that their son was presumed dead in a car “crash”, that they were devastated when the dental records confirmed it, as if they hadn’t helped prepare all the details in Shinichi’s absurd charade, to ensure it would be believed.

The officers moved away to study the car again, and Kaito swallowed hard, committing every detail of that conversation to memory, as he would with every conversation for the next few hours, so he could tell Subaru later what conversations he’d had with everyone while wearing the man’s disguise. Because of _course_ the Kudous’ tenant was an accomplished sniper, that Shinichi needed elsewhere for this production. Naturally. Why _wouldn’t_ Shinichi have a convenient sniper so close?

Subaru probably wasn’t his real name though. Kaito wasn’t sure why Shinichi knew so many people with immersive fake identities or skills with latex masks, and he hadn’t seen Subaru’s true face, but he knew a mask when he saw one, even as masterfully crafted as this was, nearly as good as Kaito could make himself.

Conan stiffened in his arms, looking up towards the sound of an idling engine. Kaito glanced the same direction as subtly as he could, and saw a skinny, ambiguous figure on a motorcycle, clad completely in padded riding gear, just outside the police boundary. The figure appeared to be making eye contact with Conan through their helmet, which was impressive because Kaito couldn’t see through it at all at this angle. Pity a helmet like that wouldn’t work with the Kid aesthetic or he might try it himself, rather than relying on the shadows from his hat and some cleverly applied makeup to disguise the shape of his face without looking unnatural.

The figure turned their faceplate pointedly in the direction of… something behind Kaito, but he knew better than to turn suddenly to figure out what, then they kicked off and drove away. None of the officers even glanced up at the revving of the motorcycle’s engine. They all seemed occupied with inspecting the body.

Conan started trembling. Kaito couldn’t quite tell if it was from stress or fear or rage, especially since he didn’t know the significance of the person on a motorcycle. The little detective played his cards impressively close to his chest. The body language demanding he be set down was far easier to read, and Kaito obliged before Conan could struggle to vocalize the request, instinctively keeping a comforting hand on his shoulder like he would for any actual child that size.

Conan stared off after the motorcycle for a few moments, then transferred his gaze to something in the vicinity of whatever the motorcycle rider had indicated. This time, Kaito did look. Conan was looking at the house next door. Kaito hadn’t seen its occupants since the afternoon he had offered, out of the goodness of his heart, to attend Ran’s funeral as Shinichi (and if he had known that making _that_ offer would be taken as volunteering himself for even more of Shinichi’s schemes, he would have been more specific about _only_ volunteering for the funeral), but Shinichi’s lack of concern and his failure to even acknowledge their absence hinted that he had some other plan in place that involved them not showing up. Kaito hoped, for their sakes, that it was a simpler plan than this one.

Finally, Conan looked at the car for the first time since they’d first run out here ‘in surprise’. He seemed to collapse in on himself. Kaito longed to comfort him, but he couldn’t say anything to acknowledge that Shinichi was likely grieving his former life. They were still in public, and Kaito had a role to play. They both did.

Eventually, Sato returned, with forms and instructions, and the car and body were taken away separately. Before the officers left, he noticed them chatting again, and Megure scowling anxiously at his phone, and wondered how long Shinichi’s parents were planning on ignoring their phones.

Kaito ushered Conan inside, their part in the masquerade done for now. He traded the house slippers he had ‘accidentally’ run outside in for clean ones. Shinichi disappeared upstairs as Kaito threw the soiled pair away. Sure, they could probably be cleaned and returned to use, but no one would want that reminder of this day.

Kaito pulled out his phone and texted Shinichi’s dad, a simple text containing just a question mark. Moments later, he got a text back with an exclamation mark. Yuusaku claimed it was a code he had used with an old friend, but it reminded Kaito of a pile of fabric, with **?** s and **!** s printed on each one that had been in the Kid room when he first fell into it.

He aggressively did _not_ follow that train of thought. Even if those things were related, and Yuusaku had known his pops, how would he even ask about their friendship, if it actually was one? (Did Shinichi consider him a friend? Was that at all an analogous situation?)

Kaito sat heavily at the kitchen table, but he couldn’t hide his head in his hands until he was no longer playing the part of Subaru Okiya. He didn’t feel like patching up the mask after he tore it out of stress.

Kaito hoped Sniper Subaru would get home soon. He needed to go pester Aoko to feel normal again, and maybe, a tiny bit, to reassure himself she was still alive.


	4. Kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sato gets something resembling an answer

A year later, the death of Kudou Shinichi wasn’t old enough to officially be a cold case, but it felt like one. Nothing had been resolved. The Kudous had left the country within a month, to “get away from painful memories,” and if they hadn’t been so grief stricken, Sato might have thought they were _trying_ to get the police to stop investigating their son’s death, with some of the pessimistic things they said.

It was true that there seemed to be no evidence forthcoming. The only lead they had on a potential sniper was that the bullet came, not from the south, but from the west. Unless one of the neighbors had a very illegal rifle (and they didn’t, the police had gotten warrants, and none of the houses on that block had any hint of bullet casings or gun paraphernalia at all) then the only spot for a sniper to have shot from was at twice the distance the police experts said was possible. A team eventually investigated that building anyway, and found nothing, but was it because there was nothing, or because the sniper’d had more than enough time to clean up after themself?

The headrest in the car that had burned so much more than everything else had tested positive, not for gasoline or other accelerants, but for hairspray – admittedly enough that it seemed like someone had smashed entire bottles of hairspray onto it, but that wasn’t a finding that suggested foul play.

The only other thing they had found about the car that could be remotely classified as suspicious was the unidentified bit of melted plastic and metal under the front axle, small enough that it was dismissed as a child’s toy that had been dropped in the street and then gotten stuck in the undercarriage somehow.

It wasn’t any of the facts of the case that had Sato still feeling so suspicious, but everything else about the situation.

A surprising number of people connected to the Kudous seemed to have vanished within six months. Agasa, their next door neighbor hadn’t been heard from for at least as long as Shinichi had been dead (though no one reported him missing), and there had been an explosion, presumed a bomb, at his house only two months after the Kudous left for America. Kudou Yuusaku had been the one to contact the insurance company about fixing the damage, and further investigation revealed that Agasa had quietly sold his house to the Kudou family less than a week before Shinichi had died.

In the process, and this was about the point at which Sato had shared her suspicions with Takagi, she had uncovered the unsettling fact that neither Conan nor his friend Haibara existed on paper outside of their school records. They had no birth certificates or dental records, and the only doctors’ records between the two of them being from the time Conan wound up in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach. Which was weird, because Sato was sure Conan had travelled internationally with the Mouri family at least once. But apparently his passport didn’t exist, nor did his medical records.

For that matter, the only public documents Takagi could find on Subaru, the Kudous’ former tenant, were the documents that he had used to qualify for his apartment before he rented from them.

Three people that apparently never existed disappearing all at once, and a fourth person who hadn’t been heard from for the same amount of time. Something was fishy, but since it wasn’t connected to a crime or a missing person’s report, and none of them were currently committing fraud with their fake identities, there wasn’t anything they could do with the knowledge.

All of these people were tangentially related to the Kudous, but the Kudous weren’t around to offer their opinion.

With the revelation of Conan’s apparent non-existence, Sato had revisited her suspicion that Conan had been covering up Shinichi’s death. On one hand, barely more than a week after she had asked Conan if Shinichi was dead, Shinichi had, apparently, died, with Conan as a witness. On the other hand, Conan was clearly hiding other things, and it was far easier to hide identities or relationships, than it was to fake someone’s death. (She briefly wondered if the hidden identity was that Conan was somehow Shinichi’s _son_ , but the two were a little too close in age for that to be plausible, and, cynically, she supposed that an infant would have been the hypothetical unfortunate teen _girl’s_ problem to deal with, if that were the case.)

Sato sighed as she sorted case folders away. A year-old case shouldn’t be taking her mind off of all of her current work. Good thing tomorrow was Tuesday, her day off, and she could take the time to get her head on straight.

She left the building and turned left, to cross the street to a café, rather than right towards the parking garage. It was a gray day, and she could use a pick-me-up to keep her mind from straying darker.

When she re-emerged, sipping her steaming mocha, she caught sight of a familiar face, turning to cross the street. Before she really processed what she was doing, she found herself jogging to catch up. “Kudou-kun?”

As soon as the name was out of her mouth, she was chastising herself. She had been fixated far too long on his untimely death, and the fact that the girl next to him looked almost exactly like Ran meant she was almost certainly just imagining things. Plus, from behind, he looked like an entirely different person.

Yet the young man she’d been staring at flinched minutely and glanced over his shoulder, meeting her eyes, before turning back to his companions, two of them. There was Ran’s lookalike, and a vaguely familiar face under thick blond hair, and he shooed them both ahead without him. Or in any case, he spoke softly to them, and the others continued on without him while he waited on the corner for her.

“I’m not Shinichi-kun,” he said without preamble when she caught up. “But I seem to get that more often since his death.”

Not Shinichi, but he looked so similar, and knew immediately what she was thinking, without asking who she was…

“You’re Kaitou Kid,” she realized aloud. Kid did have a heist scheduled in the area tomorrow night.

Kid tensed. “I will neither confirm nor deny your suspicions.”

He looked ready to flee, but Sato wasn’t going for her handcuffs. “Do you know what really happened to Kudou Shinichi?” she asked instead. Given how restricted guns were, perhaps a criminal had heard mutterings about why a sniper would have killed him. The police hadn’t been able to figure out the timing of his death, or a motive more specific than ‘he got a lot of people arrested for their crimes.’

Kid sighed, his eyes searching her face for… something. She wasn’t sure what.

“Come with me,” Kid instructed, grabbing her wrist and leading her to the mouth of a nearby alley, out of the way of the continuing flood of pedestrians.

He released her, then quickly checked behind and inside the nearby dumpster for people, before stepping close and speaking softly, but seriously. “ _Off_ the record, Sato-keiji…” He paused, assessing her eager nod, but apparently judged her sincere enough. “Off the record, there’s a group out there that’s more ruthless than any yakuza I’ve encountered. They don’t hesitate to murder anyone they even _think_ knows about them, and I’m pretty sure they’ve got people in the police force to help cover their tracks.”

Sato nodded again, shallowly, with wide eyes. There had to be a reason he opened with that statement.

Kid’s sharp gaze was pinning her in place. “Shinichi-kun got on their bad side.” Kid gave that a moment to sink in, as Sato felt her stomach drop. But the wave of renewed grief didn’t have time to fully sink in before Kid continued. “Shinichi-kun didn’t fake his death, _twice_ over before it was believed, just for an officer he respects to draw _their_ attention by prying into his life.”

It felt like all the breath had left her lungs. “He _faked_ his death?” she managed to ask, in a whisper. She could feel how deadly serious Kid was, and knew better than to draw attention.

“And even so, they blew up his neighbor’s house, on the suspicion that Shinichi-kun had told him something,” Kid agreed.

“And Conan-kun?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“He’s fine,” Kid assured her dismissively.

“He doesn’t exist,” Sato reflexively pointed out.

“On paper perhaps, but the child you’re worried about is fine, no matter his name,” Kid argued. “Shinichi-kun called in a favor and got him out of the country too.”

“What about Ran-chan?” she asked, wondering about the death that had drawn her attention to Conan (and by extension, to Shinichi) in the first place.

Kid’s face fell for a fraction of a second before returning to a well-practiced neutral expression, but it was enough that she knew before he answered. “Ah, she truly died I’m afraid.” He hesitated, and Sato tried to pretend that truth didn’t feel like a punch to the gut. “Shinichi-kun put off his ‘death’ for her, I think,” Kid added, another hint of sorrow flashing across his face before it blanked again.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Sato had the presence of mind to ask. Kid was still a criminal, and she’d done nothing in particular to gain his attention, and certainly not his trust.

Kid stepped back to a normal conversational distance, smirking. “You should come to my heists more often, Officer. Why do you think I hold them?”

He stepped out of the alley and disappeared into the crowd before Sato could come up with a response. When she’d recovered her wits enough to follow, he was nowhere in sight.

She pondered his closing statement as she found her way back to her car. Why _did_ Kid hold his heists? He always announced them, and always returned the gems he had stolen. On the other hand, now that she considered the matter, there were a surprising number of “nearby incidents” around Kid heists, ones that never made it into official records, but she heard about them when she ran into Division Two officers in the break room. Things like broken windows, locked doors on adjacent buildings that were scratched as though they’d been picked despite no other signs of unauthorized entry, even rumors of hearing gunfire…

By the time she got back to her car, mocha nearly-finished, a new fire was burning in her gut. She could do _something_ to avenge Shinichi’s removal from their lives.

She set her empty cup down in the cup holder, and made a call.

“Hi, Megure-keibu? It’s Sato. I know I’m scheduled off tomorrow, but do you think I could be assigned to the Kid heist? … No particular reason, I just have a feeling.”

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic around the same time as Eavesdropping, in 2015, but due to the content, I waited to post any of it until it was complete. I'm glad to finally share it with you.
> 
> Let me know what you thought :)


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